We to a big leap of faith, quit our jobs are moved to the the heart of the Shawnee National Forest to follow our dreams of self sufficiency and to make a go of living off the land… Can we help you feed your family?

Garden murder and more…

Garden murder and more…

As avid organic gardeners, our days are spent waging war on garden enemies. Typically it’s silly stuff like picking cabbage worms or squash beetles (or similar) off our plants and then feeding them to the chickens. The girls are my little gaarden warriors, they assist me in collecting bugs in a bucket… Sometimes Everly will decide there are one or two bugs she simply must keep in a jar. They always end up dead eventually so I never object to her bug keeping. As long as the bugs leave the garden, whether they are chicken snacks or drowned in a “dirt soup” I am agreeable.

Today was the most extreme day of my of the garden wars yet. It was a wet, sprinkling morning and we headed out to feed the chickens. Everly was going to try picking some quick strawberries before the rain intensified. She made note that a dill volunteer plant had surfaced in the strawberry bed and was showing me her find when out of the corner of my eye I saw what appeared to be a tunnel being dug in the blueberry box, right before my eyes.

I stalked right over, picked up a sharp garden shovel and stabbed it right in where the dirt was moving. “squee! eek, eek, eek” we hear from the soil. Both girls were watching me I realized as I was trying to dig the darn thing up and see if I’d disposed of it for good. It’s probably better that we didn’t unearth any stabbed in half critters, for the girls sake but I’m cursing the darn thing and hoping it’s dead.

I’m pretty sure it was a nasty mole or vole. Come to think of it, one of our outdoor cats was eating a mouse looking thing on the deck the other day that resembled a vole. Whatever it is, it destroyed our almost established asparagus bed last year among other things. Very aggravating! We installed an ultrasonic repellant thing in the garden this year, the batteries are dead in it right now. Must replace ASAP!

I really hope I did get the little bugger with my shovel this morning but it’s kind of surprising, even to me, that I was motivated to stab a burrowing critter in my garden, in front of my girls. Guess we are ready for farm life huh?